Abstract

Technological developments in large-scale biological experiments, coupled with bioinformatics tools, have opened the doors to computational approaches for the global analysis of whole genomes. This has provided the opportunity to look at genes within their context in the cell. The integration of vast
amounts of data generated by these technologies provides a strategy for identifying potential drug targets
within microbial pathogens, the causative agents of infectious diseases. As proteins are druggable targets,
functional interaction networks between proteins are used to identify proteins essential to the survival,
growth, and virulence of these microbial pathogens. Here we have integrated functional genomics data to
generate functional interaction networks between Mycobacterium tuberculosis proteins and carried out computational analyses to dissect the functional interaction network produced for identifying drug targets
using network topological properties. This study has provided the opportunity to expand the range of potential drug targets and to move towards optimal target-based strategies.